Today we walked in neighbourhoods north and south of Kensington High street but found no market on our walk, which was a bit of a bummer. Though we found entire neighbourhoods of white homes. And, in other parts, red brick homes, most of which were affluent, some with interesting snippets to their history displayed on their frontages which quite caught our fancy.
Again, this entire area was once all rural, but changed after it became a retreat for William and Mary, who came regularly to avoid Whitehall and to 'take the air' as William was chronically in such poor health. Ironically, Mary died before William, very young, just 32, after contracting smallpox. William died not long after, when he fell off his horse, broke a collarbone and complications set in. So, Kensington ended up not such a happy place for this young royal pair. Courtiers followed royalty over the years and homes around the palace mushroomed, streets expanded, shops catering to the growing populace exploded. Even Jeeves, the butler, has a dry-cleaner's shopfront these days.
Being Kensington, there were lots of plaques over lots of houses, telling the tale of lots of people who lived in them: many of whom we had never heard of. Even the King of the Zulus evidently lived in one of them for a time in the 1880s. Mayhap a plaque might go up on our place when we leave!
Just behind the High street in a quiet residential enclave we found a plaque advising that this had been the home of Antony Armstrong-Jones, about whom, one of the best lines ever, came from his wife, Princess Margaret, when she was visiting New York one time in the 1960s. When asked how was the Queen, her rapid response was: "Which one? My mother? My sister? Or my husband?" Naughty, naughty Margaret.
Further along, is a romantic turret-like building once owned by the actor, Richard Harris, but coveted, it is believed, by David Bowie, who evidently lost out on it in a bidding war to Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame, who lives here still. Right next door is a large red brick place once owned by an illustrator that Charles Dickens commissioned for one of his books. It has been extended and enlarged and is now owned by a movie director, Michael Winner, who bought it from his parents in the early 1970s for £150,000. Today, it is valued at well over £60 million, an astonishing price.* Location, location.
In another little enclave around Kensington Square one of the plaques noted that John Stuart Mills once lived here. This was the fellow, we remembered, whose maid, needing to make a fire for her master's comfort in the upstairs bedroom, reached for an untidy stack of papers that were to hand and lit them one by one, building a spirited fire. Only to find when the master returned that that was the only copy of Carlyle's voluminous manuscript of what was meant to become The French Revolution - A History, given to Mills for his comments. There were no copies. Not even a rough research note. Imagine Mills's abject mortification having to trot across to Thomas Carlyle's home to explain the lump of cinder char that he carried in his hands as proof. Mon dieu!
And just around that corner was William Makepeace Thackary's home where tiny, mousy Charlotte Bronte from Yorkshire was invited one night to dinner after she had dedicated Jane Eyre to Thackeray. Thackeray, in reply, had sent this unknown writer, 'Currer Bell', a copy of his new release, Vanity Fair, with his 'greatest regards', not realising that the writer was a woman.
Not a social animal, Charlotte was somewhat awe-stuck at dinner that evening in the beautiful Georgian house in Young street. As it transpired she was not the brightest social wit or wisdom ever to have graced Thackeray's table. When asked by another guest in one of the many desperate silences if she liked London, there was a long long pause before Charlotte admitted, "Yes....and...no". Nothing more. Well before the guests were due to go home Thackeray was seen skipping out his front door, pulling on his jacket, furtively, heading down the road to his club. The rogue. Those were the days.
Our last stop for the day was a hundred feet above ground, on the rooftop of the old Derry and Toms Department Store. Here in the 1930s, just before the war, the owner had a roof garden designed and built for his edification. The plantings are in a bare 18" of topsoil. I imagine too much more and the weight would be enormous. This has clearly been sufficient to create a serene urban oasis that fills over an acre of roof-top space, revealing tantalising glimpses of the city on all sides through tiny wrought iron apertures slotted into the garden walls.
Today the garden is part of Richard Branson's Virgin empire, used for events, but, inbetween-time, is open to the public for visits. Branson has had it renovated in recent times and now there are themed spaces with a Moroccan feel, all decoratively arched and spotted with soft lush sofas. A long elegant water channel in the style of the one in Alhambra in Granada graces one space. Another has been converted into a woodland, with a bubbling stony-bottomed brook and four pink flamingos roaming free. A delightful escape. Many couples were just wandering, or sitting. Others with notepads and iPads were purposefully walking through with event planners.
We completed our planned walk today, as we were a bit knackered yesterday and didn't quite end up where we had anticipated. Our bus brought us along narrow streets that were quite a squeeze. We are loving the buses but our rides are not without incident. One day this week a car hit the back of one of our buses. There was not too much damage to the bus, but the entire side of his car was sliced and ruined. This morning we broke down in a big red: a temperature gauge flashed and the entire system closed down allowing little or no forward motion. The driver let us all off at the nearest stop and had to wait there for an engineer.
Today we started closer to the walk finish, beginning with a morning coffee and cake at a lovely little patisserie called Plum, near Holland Park. I have resorted to an espresso each morning now, as the 'long black', to date in London, has been dreadful. Called, as they are in Europe, Americanos. Here they are nearly as bad as the coffee in the States. Dishwater. The cappuccino, too, is consistently weak, even anaemic. We had read somewhere before coming over that Aussie barristas have been a breath of fresh air on the London coffee scene with a reputation for rejuvenating London coffee: teaching everyone how to make good coffee, supposedly. But, not everywhere, it seems. Or, they might have focussed on espresso training as they are the only ones that are really fine.
We headed to Holland Park shortcutting from the coffeeshop through an enclave of lovely white homes bordering the park only later discovering that here live such folk as Simon Cowell, Robbie Williams and a Saudi Arabian princess or two. Big white homes on two streets back on to a delightful little mews development that cuts across the centre of the enclave. One old home still has a crumbling set of lovely old decrottoir still in place, set low into the front fence, for removing excrement and mud from dirty walking boots, assuming that anyone from the abode was so inclined to walk.
Not that I think too many actually did walk anywhere as there are cars parked, with chauffeurs waiting, all up and down the streets here, and in front of one house, where we tried to photograph the heavy sliding internal white grills imprisoning each and every window in the place, a chauffeur and a security guard were there to stop us: we were not free to do so. We did, however, photograph next door, and caught a glimpse of the very grilled windows in the periphery of a shot.
The house next door, we later discovered, happens to be Beckham's London digs. It looks like all the rest, but unlike many of the others has entire floors dug out from underground. Their vast extensions took three years of noise and street upheaval to complete. Whilst the reno was ongoing they leased the look-a-like place directly opposite. Their new place cost £46 million to purchase. They also bought the house behind them so they might extend their garden space. After three years of deep underground excavations and extensive renovations and planning permissions imagine the completed cost of the house on these lots now.
The park, Holland Park, is a delight. It has a small Kyoto Japanese garden with an elongated water feature to one end. The park once had a lovely home, Holland House, right at its heart, but now only remnants remain after the blitz. And, as it was such a lovely day coatless hoards were out sunning themselves, feeding nuts to the squirrels. Here, my friend Charles Dickens was once invited to dinner in those romantic Victorian days when strolling ladies held parasols as they graced these gorgeous grounds in their long beautiful day gowns. There was even a peacock then, as there is today.
*Update: Some days later we chatted to a man on the street in Knightsbridge. He knew Michael Winner. He says that his house sold a few years ago for a lot less than it was reputed to be valued, to Robbie Williams, the singer, who wants his daughter, Teddy, to grow up and go to school in England. Robbie bought it in the end for £17.5 million, it seems. Great buy!
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